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My Iron Horse SGS-DH

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I bought my Iron Horse in early September after about three
months of trying to decide on a DH bike for two grand, now the RRP of this bike is
£3000 but Iron Horse run something called Subsidised Rider Scheme. With this
they give you a third off any bike in their range if you race for them and send them
your official race results, not a bad deal I thought, so I went ahead and phoned
them up and had a talk and eventually decided to buy the bike. When I got it I was
ecstatic here was this amazing downhill bike all for me so I went straight out riding
it.

AND SO TO RIDE

First impressions were good it tracked very well and the suspension worked excellently,
just getting along with its job. The four bar linkage design works well it doesnít
feel like too much of a beast to pedal even on reasonably short downhill courses.
The frame feels strong and gives you confidence to try those drops you wouldnít do
on a hardtail. The bike comes specced with Risse TrixxxY forks which have six inches
of travel and rebound and compression adjustment, they were just lovely to ride and
felt smooth and they just seemed to erase every bump out off the course, absolutely
brilliant. My only gripe with the bike first off was the Hayes discs, they arenít
very adjustable and the front pads were rubbing on the disc, this was more annoying
than performance reducing, but I have to say I can see what all the fuss about disc
brakes is, they just stop you! The other components on the bike worked excellently,
the AC chainset and the XTR rear derrailleur were magnificent and the Sun Mammoth
wheels feel unbreakable, they are absolutely massive.

LET’S GO RIDE IT

Well
once I got over the initial shock of having a bike that felt this good it was down
to the important thing of saving myself £1000 by doing a Downhill race. I decide
to enter the KIS winter DH series as I had heard of how good their BSX track was
and how well organised the whole event was. The first round was in October, so I
packed up the car and off I went with a mate to prove my worth as a downhiller. Race
day came and the weather was awful, it felt like buckets of water were being poured
over me all the time and the track reflected this, their was a foot of mud in some
places, not too mention their were a couple of uphill sections in the track, this
was gonna be fun on a heavy DH bike. Anyway I got on with the practise and after
a while the forks started to stiffen up and eventually ended up seizing altogether,
I was not happy, I sprayed some lube around the seals which got them going a bit,
maybe two inches of travel at the most. I did the race and went home feeling very
annoyed with the forks, I figured that water and mud must have got into the forks,
so that meant dodgy seals.

ALL IS NOT WELL

This is where the fun begins, the next day after the race I was checking out the
bike and I noticed that one of the linkages had come lose on the swing arm, and that
the chain device (an AC sport chain guide) was pushing the chain off the chainring,
and also the rear brake had lost all power, right off to the phone to call Iron Horse.
They perfectly understood and sent down a courier the next day to collect the bike
and to repair or replace any parts that were not working properly, they also sent
the forks off to CVI for repair and servicing, they replaced the seals and put new
oil in and tested them. I got the bike back three days before my next race and all
seemed to be working well, but the ultimate test would come over the weekend.

Well again raceday came and this time it was dry, which I was pleased about, practise
was going fine and then came my timed runs, the bike worked excellently, shame about
my riding well maybe next time I can combine the two.

BUT I STILL LOVE IT

I havenít had anymore problems with the bike, it is going great, but I have put shock
boots on the forks just in case. If any of you are interested in cars, you may well
have heard of TVR, their cars are great to look at and great to drive however they
are pretty unreliable, very much like my bike was for the first 2 months I just hope
nothing else goes wrong because it is a great ride and at only £2000 great
value for money.

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